Com Port Manager

The Com Port Manager robot skill helps you see which COM/Serial ports on your Windows PC are currently being used (opened) by your ARC project through scripts. This is useful when you’re not sure whether your script successfully opened a port, or when you suspect a port is already in use.

What this skill does

• Displays a list of COM/Serial ports that have been opened by ARC script commands.
• Shows whether each port is currently Open or Closed.
• Helps you confirm that your script is managing ports correctly (opening when needed, closing when finished).

What this skill does not do

• It does not display a real-time communication log (you will not see the data being sent/received).
• It does not open or close ports by itself; it only reports what your scripts have opened.

How COM ports are opened (beginner explanation)

A COM port is a numbered connection on Windows (like COM3 or COM7) used to talk to serial devices. In ARC, COM ports are typically opened and used by scripts (EZ-Script, JavaScript, or Python) using the COM/Serial commands provided by ARC.

When you would use Com Port Manager

• Port won’t open: You want to confirm whether your script actually opened the correct COM port.
• Port conflict: Another program may already be using the port. This skill helps you see if ARC has it open.
• Cleanup: You want to make sure your script closes the port when your project stops or when a task finishes.

Need to see the actual serial data?

If you need to view the communication traffic (sent/received bytes) in real-time, use an external tool such as Microsoft PortMon. This Com Port Manager skill only shows open/closed status—there is no communication log in this skill.